Sunspot of Cycle 25

This evening a picture was made of the Sun with a sunspot of the new cycle #25. The picture is a compilation of different pictures made with ZWO224MC and SolarMaxIII 70/400 DS BF15.
Next to the sunspot some huge prominences can be seen.
AutoStakkert!2 was used to stack AVI movies; final editing with CS4.

Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas Widefield

This morning, UT 2h58, a widefield picture (13mm) was taken of the area of Ursa Major. The comet can be seen as a very faint "star". Models predict the comet will be as bright as magnitude 2à3 and thus visible with the naked eye. Timing early May.

M109 Galaxy

Messier M109 Galaxy is located in constellation Ursa Major and about 83million lightyears away from Earth. Picture was taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting : ISO6400 and 26minutes exposure, each picture 30s.
Raw data converted to DNG format and stacking using Deepskystacker with final editing in CS4.

Moon, Venus and Pleiades at Sunset

Sunset March 28, 2020 : close encounter of the Moon, Venus and the Pleiades.

Still 5 Messier Objects to go

Still 5 Messier Objects to go to finish my Messier list.

Below my "To Do list" of my 5 Messier objects and arranged by date of midnight culmination and altitude above horizon :

April 1 : M68
April 16 : M83 8°55'
June 16 : M6 6°34'
June 20 : M7 3°58'
June 29 : M69 6°22

Close encouter Moon Venus Pleiades : Video

Close encounter of the Moon, Venus and the Pleaides at sunset of March 28, 2020. Video taken  with Nikon D7500. Setting Timelapse mode with 3min interval.

M101 Pinwheel Galaxy Re-edit

Re-editing the Tiff file of M101, the Pinwheel galaxy.

M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

Galaxy Messier M101, the Pinwheel galaxy is located in Ursa Major and about 21million lightyears away from Earth.

This is so far my longest exposure I ever made. With almost 2h30m and taking 292 pictures each 30s exposure. The picture was taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting : ISO6400 including darks and 292 pictures 30s exposure each. Raw data converted to DNG and stacking using DeepSkyStacker with final editing using CS4.

Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas with TAL200K

Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas in constellation Ursa Major captured with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting : ISO3200 and 60s exposure time. DNG picture editing using CS4.

Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas

Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting ISO3200 and 30s exposure time.

Periodic System for Amateur Astronomer Completed

The challenge of "Periodic System for Amateur Astronomer" is finally completed. Almost two years to complete all objects. All objects photographed with Nikon DSLR (D60 and D7500).

M104 Sombrero Galaxy

Messier M104, Sombrero Galaxy is located in constellation Virgo and about 50million ly from Earth.
Picture was taken with Nikon D7500 and TLAPO80/480 f/6. Setting : ISO3200 with darks and 44pictures, each 30s - total exposure time 22min. Raw data converted to DNG and stacking using DeepSkyStacker and final editing in CS4.

Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas

Yesterday evening pictures were taken of Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas. The comet is almost visible with the naked eye (magnitude 8) and can be seen in constellation Ursa Major.
Picture taken with Nikon D7500 and TLAPO 80/480 f/6. Setting : ISO3200 and 30s. Also a sequence was made of 23minutes. Raw pictures converted to DNG and stacking using DeepSkyStacker with final editing in CS4.

Long exposure of 23minutes

Coming up close approach of Venus and Pleiades M45

Block your agenda : April 3 and 4, 2020; close approach of Venus and Pleiades, the open star cluster M45. This is visible with the naked eye.
On thursday I took the picture below with Venus still south of the open star cluster.

Galaxy M58

Galaxy Messier M58 in constellation Virgo is located a distance of 65 million lightyears away from Earth.
Setting : Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5; ISO6400 and 24 pictures each 30s exposure. Darks are taken. Raw pictures converted to DNG and stacked using DeepSkyStacker. Final editing with CS4.

The Leo Triplet Galaxies

The Leo Triplet Galaxies consist of M65, M66 and NGC3628 and are located in constellation Leo about 35 million lightyears from Earth.
The picture was taken using Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting : 21 x 30s each and ISO6400. Raw data converted inot DNG and stacking using DeepSkyStacker. Final editing with CS4.

First day of Spring

Exactly at 4h30 local time, the first day of spring will start.

Kennedy Space Center & Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

Entrance of Kennedy Space Center

Visiting Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station March 6-8, 2020.

Entrance of Atlantis building with Shuttle Boosters

Saturn 1B rocket on the ground

Mercury-Redstone Rocket - Alan Shepard - first American in Space

In front of Saturn V building complex

In front of incredable Space Shuttle Atlantis

Selfie with Astronaute Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper

Selfie with Astronaute Wendy Lawrence

My first live rocket launch : Falcon 9 CRS20

Life Falcon 9 CRS20 rocket launch pictures taken with Nikon D7500 and lenses 18-200 and 10-24mm.

Space Complex 40 as seen from Titusville

A couple of seconds before the launch of Falcon 9 CRS20

Incredable bright light a couple of seconds after launching

Close-up after first stage and ignition of second stage.

  For the first time ever I was able see a real live rocket launch. On March 6th, 23h50 local time, a Falcon 9 loaded with a Dragon spacecraft was launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. I observed the launch from Titusville at the Indian river, about 21km from complex 40. Even at this distance the launch was seen perfectly and very bright. The sound of the rocket launch came much later about 1 minute after T-zero.

First Stage Booster landing at Landing Zone 1 'SLC 13'

The first stage booster came back and landed at Space Launch Complex 13, Landing Zone 1. This was seen aswell very easy and very bringt. One day later I could see the landed booster from Space Launch Complex 14.

Booster (right above the trees) from CRS20 Falcon 9 after landing as seen from SLC14

SpaceX Space Launch Complex 40, One day later.

M104 with COAST telescope

The Sombrero Galaxy M104 taken with the COAST telescope in Tenerife. The Fits files are downloaded and converted to Tiff files. Final editing with CS4.

M17 Swan Nebula

M17 or Swan Nebula was captured using the COAST telescope on Tenerife. Previous I edited the pictures using webeditor and downloaded the file in PNG format. Final editing was done using CS4 but it was difficult to allign the pixels from the different filter pictures. As the pictures are also available as Fits files I downloaded these to my pc and transformed the format to Tiff using Fits Liberator : see this link. 
Once the tiff files saved, CS4 was used to allign and to edit the picture. Below the result; personally I'm very pleased with it.

Weather Summary February 2020

February 2020: a wet, windy and warm february.
February was a very wet month with 124l/m2 rain. Two storms passed resulting in a total wind run of 3603km. This feb month, a couple of local records are broken:  longest wet periode(8 days), highest monthly rain (124mm) and highest wind gust (46.8km/h).